Category Archives: Mind Experiments

Observe Oneself More and More Closely

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles in the Pond Blog, written by Bill Harvey
October 16, 2026

Click here for an update about Pebbles.

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS the 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 11

For each manifestation, we ask ourselves why we did it, tracing the causes as far back as we can. Then we decide whether we want to give rise to such a manifestation again in light of our goals. If we do not wish to, we resolve not to.

Given our past experience with self-control, it’s useful to predict how successful we are likely to be in suppressing such manifestations. Thus, we set realistic goals for reducing unwanted manifestations gradually, rather than resolving to do the impossible all at once, which would only lead to discouragement and weakened self-belief.

If we always resolve to do something we believe we can do, even though it is only a little better than we have done in the past, we will gradually build self-belief, allowing us to confidently raise our sights a little more each time.

The effect of this process is to telescope the delay between action and thought so that at first we will find ourselves realizing soon after an inappropriate action that it was inappropriate and why. Then we will recognize these things instantly after the action; then we will catch ourselves in mid-action; and then we will catch ourselves before action. (Actually, these four types of experiences will always continue to occur, but the latter types will become more frequent and the former less frequent.)

Some of the programs we will decide to remove are programs we once consciously established, and which were useful to us at the time, but which have long since become counterproductive based on changing circumstances and our own increased capabilities.

It is an inherent characteristic of any developing system that heroes emerge and are heroes only within the context that stimulated their creation; as these heroes overcome and change such contexts, the heroes themselves become the context to be changed. Thus, both coping systems and governments begin as useful and gradually become counterproductive. This is the nature of the evolutionary process itself.

However, any system tends to be self-perpetuating: programs may be visualized as power centers in our heads, trying to survive despite their vestigiality. Thus, they will get some senators to speak in their favor, and in honoring them for their past service, we will hesitate to remove them. (Senators = mini-personalities that have been implanted in us by the internalized influence of others… at least two from Mom (her Mom and Dad); at least two from Dad (his Mom and Dad); etc. Each senator is a “parasite circuit” capable of “taking over our minds” by making us think its suggestions are ours.)

Mind Experiments

Revisit the Mind Experiments from Part 10

1. Identify your senators.

Pick a day, and on that day, listen to the conversations in your head and see if you can pick out the separate voices, e.g., the one that says, “You’re getting ripped off by” whomever you’re with, the one who’s always putting you down, etc.

Who are they?

2. De-energizing parental parasite circuits

Make a list of your father’s and your mother’s priorities. Then, side-by-side, list your own. By comparing yours to theirs, detect which of your priorities aren’t really your priorities but do influence your actions just as if they were, because of the hypnotic conditioning of your robot by long association with their robots at a time when you were maximally impressionable/imprintable.

Note: You might use a format like this; draw arrows wherever you see connections.

3. De-energizing parental-dynamic parasite circuits

How did your parents play together? What were some of their acts—make a list.

Then, for each act, see occasions you have played out each one’s role in your own life.

Love to all,
THEI Team

Please note: The Pebbles in the Pond blog written before Bill Harvey passed will continue to be posted here. However, the email notifications you have been receiving in your inbox will now come from a new email address: billharveyblog@humaneffectivenessinstitute.org . You may have to set this to be recognized as “not spam” so it appears in your primary or main email. We send these out every Friday morning.
In case you missed the last 2 posts, here is the link to last week’s blog, Edit Your Head Files. Here is the link to the post from two weeks ago, Celebrating Bill Harvey.

Edit Your Head Files

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Welcome to this week’s Pebbles Blog written by Bill Harvey
October 9, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS the 50th Anniversary Edition Excerpt Series: Part 10

The first step is to become aware of our programming...

We have all been programmed. Every experience we have ever had and every communication we have ever received has implanted in us a predisposition to act and think in certain ways.

There are currently a large number of programs operating in our heads, most of which we are no longer aware of or were never aware of.

These programs interact to determine precisely how we will behave in a specific set of circumstances. To the extent that we allow this to continue, our behavior will be predictable based on knowledge of our programming. Thus, we will be mechanical slaves, our lives the mathematical result of all our programming inputs.

It is possible, however, to gradually become aware of all our programming; to select which programming to keep, which to modify, and which to remove; and to act with conscious awareness of our relevant programming so that we can either ratify or override it in any given set of circumstances. When these things are done, we are no longer mechanical slaves to our programming and can choose when to use each of our specific programs.

The first step is to become aware of our programming:
this requires close observation.

We must observe ourselves as if we are observing another person we have never known before. Every word, every tone of voice, every minute gesture, every action, and every thought must be scrutinized from the standpoint of:

  • Why was that done?
  • What are the roots of such behavior?
  • What is the motivation?
  • When might it have been implanted and by whom or what?

We will find that the bulk of our actions serve petty ends of which we cannot consciously approve. For example, we will find that most of our words, gestures, and postures can only be explained as role-playing mimicry designed to make us feel approved of. We will find that even when we can do without outside approval, we still seek inside approval from other people whose viewpoints we have stored inside our heads.

When we have stripped away all such programming, we will no longer be addicted to the support of others: we will take what we consider the best action we know how to take at any given moment, assess the results of that action, and revise plans accordingly. We will see status in society as a form of scrip slaves/workers are permitted to give themselves in return for obedience. (Scrip = ersatz money as given by the “company” for use in the “company store”.)

Mind Experiments

Let’s revisit the Mind Experiments from Part 9

1. Watch action patterns.

  • Pick a day. On that day, from the moment you awaken, stay alert all day and watch your actions down to the smallest gesture.
  • When you seem to be observing an action pattern that appears significant to some part of your mind, ask yourself: “Why did I do that?” (Or, “Why am I doing this?”)

2. “Autopilot addictions” meditation

  • What were your mother and father “addicted” to (attached to getting or avoiding)?
  • How about your peers at school and others known to have influenced you: to what were they “addicted”?
  • To what extent do you now automatically mirror any of these addictions?

3. Meditate on the extent to which you “need” approval.

  • Whom do you “need” approval from? Why?
  • Clue: What do you work hardest at? Who would approve of you the most for working so hard at it?

Let’s add one more:

4. Develop absolute willpower.

Absolute willpower means that when you make a vow, you know you will keep it.

What stands between most of us and absolute willpower is the knowledge that we have habitually broken our vows and don’t know how to break that habit. In other words, we don’t believe ourselves when we make vows, so we don’t feel truly bound to keep them.

The way to break the habit is to start making vows to ourselves that we know we will keep, and then allow time to pass during which we always keep these vows.

Example:
The next time you catch yourself in an “unwanted manifestation” you know you can give up, vow (decide) to give it up. Make as many of these as you like, but don’t try to give up something you’re not sure you can give up until your body has observed you keeping the “easy” vows in three-dimensional reality.

Once your “lower” (cybernetically less sophisticated) parts have observed you keeping your “easy” vows, it will become much easier for you to make and keep “not-so-easy” vows, and eventually “hard” ones as well.

Love to all,
THEI Team

Awakening Real Will

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“Losing oneself and becoming a rolebot” and how to undo this

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
September 18, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS Book Excerpt Series: Part 9

Losing oneself and becoming a rolebot and how to undo this

People run on programs.
Programs are action patterns. For example. the way we get out of bed in the morning is an action pattern. Observe how you do it for a few days in a row, and you’ll see the pattern. The way you throw off the covers, swing your feet to the floor, how your body feels, what you think about, your mood, the people you think about, the emotions that strike you, and your attitude as you stand up, etc.

All this is an action pattern. Nothing is exactly the same from day to day, but everything stays within a relatively narrow range of variation. This is because there are now sets of interlacing programs in our biocomputers upstairs. They bring us through this action pattern daily without us having to consciously think about each move.

These automatic programs run 99% of our lives.

Of course, we all override the autopilot at times.
For example, when some potential danger snaps us into full alertness, we don’t make a move without thinking about it first. For example, when we are able to rise above “automatic-pilot” anger. For example, at moments of “peak realization”, “expanded consciousness”, or “satori”. But most of the rest of the time, although we repress knowledge of the fact religiously, we have no free will in what we do, because the body’s and mind’s movements follow conditioned paths from which deviation is improbable.

We always react to the same types of situations in the same ways. The programs go through their steps while we sleepily look on, along for the ride.

We consciously participated in creating these programs.
Some of the “autopilot” program punchcards in our heads were keypunched by our “conscious-mind-pilot”. For example, when we discovered how well we looked smiling that way, we decided offhandedly to keep doing it that way (at least at those times). Then our “conscious-mind-pilot” forgot about it.

The “autopilot” does it faithfully to this day whenever those times come up. Good “autopilot”!

On the other hand, the great preponderance of our “automatic pilot” programming appears to be of the Pavlovian variety, whereby we grew up addicted to certain shallow rewards without this being anyone’s conscious intention.

Mind Experiments

1. Watch action patterns.

  • Pick a day. On that day, from the moment you awaken, stay alert all day and watch your actions down to the smallest gesture.
  • When you seem to be observing an action pattern that appears significant to some part of your mind, ask yourself: “Why did I do that?” (Or, “Why am I doing this?”)

2. “Autopilot addictions” meditation

  • What were your mother and father “addicted” to (attached to getting or avoiding)?
  • How about your peers at school and others known to have influenced you: to what were they “addicted”?
  • To what extent do you now automatically mirror any of these addictions?

3. Meditate on the extent to which you “need” approval.

  • Whom do you “need” approval from? Why?
  • Clue: What do you work hardest at? Who would approve of you the most for working so hard at it?

Love to all,
Bill

Communicated expectations are seen in place of seeing the realities.

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Avoid Hasty Closure continued

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
September 11, 2026

MIND MAGIC / MIND EXPERIMENTS Book Excerpt Series: Part 8

Society communicates expectations to you, which you see as realities themselves... Your expectations of reality then...

Communicating expectations
You are vulnerable to being given expectations by other people. Their communications tell you what to expect so that when you confront a particular reality you may not perceive it, instead perceiving the expectation that was set up in you by communications from others.

Most of your value reactions have probably been conditioned in this way; when you see something that you were told is bad, you see its bad points: how else, in fact, could you see so many things as bad which have never hurt you?

This is not just a matter of your attitude when confronting an object; it is essentially a matter of your perceptions themselves: you actually see something different based on having received prior communication about an object.

In this way, society communicates expectations to you, which you then see in place of seeing the realities themselves.

Causing negative emotion
You have probably experienced excessive negative emotion as a result of worrying about what others expect of you and think of you. This is because our culture assumes each individual to be “valueless until proven otherwise”. As a result, you have reduced tolerance for the mild unpleasantness of dissonance and strive too strongly to replace it with a feeling of “It’s all right,” thereby inappropriately hastening closure.

Encouraging black-and-white positions
Such positions result from the oversimplifying effect of language within the context of time pressure. Under pressure of time and a barrage of communications, you have taken excessively strong positions on most issues despite the lack of sufficient objective evidence justifying such positions. Having taken such strong positions, you will tend to be hasty in retaking them and screening out or misinterpreting opposing evidence.

Your expectations of reality then program your perceptions, causing you to receive only those visual and other sensory images that confirm your expectations about reality.

Valuing sophistication
An individual alone will tend to think; an individual in society will tend to talk. Talking is an expression of the inborn urge to think, as it manifests itself in a social mode.  Those who think rather than talk tend to be regarded as not cooperating with society; this encourages talking and discourages thinking.

Whereas thinking progresses through falsehood to truth, discarding the interim products of falsehood, talking progresses through falsehood to truth, retaining the interim products of falsehood. Thus, many heads are filled with falsehoods generated by the process of talking, and these falsehoods are repeated in later talking.

Talking is not usually motivated by the search for truth but rather by the search for approval; thus, approval is given to those who say something already believed, to those who say something interesting, and to those who say something well, but not necessarily to those who speak truth.

Given the welter of words one is forced to hear, one soon tires of hearing the types of statements that crop up frequently; thus, one learns to avoid tiresomely discussing the simple and obvious and instead seeks approval by discussing the complex and abstract. Thus ignored, the obvious ceases to be obvious; one’s focus shifts from the obvious reality to the abstract word. One sees less and less of the obvious reality as one spends more and more time seeking approval by offering the new word.

One is motivated to believe strongly in the truth of one’s own thoughts, so that these may be communicated to others and approval received; this acts as an impetus to closure by demotivating one from criticism of one’s own thoughts.

As one is motivated not to say that which has been said before, one becomes motivated not to look at that which one has seen before. Society’s demand that one say something interesting increases the individual’s tendency to screen out the familiar.

Mind Experiments
Let’s pick up where we left off in our last blog post.

4. Me want, they expect
Whenever you are with other people and find yourself uncomfortable, check if you want to be doing the things you are doing or if you are just doing things expected of you. Then, work out a better compromise.

5. Decision experiment
“Haste makes waste.” Under presumed time pressure, humans tend to hurry, i.e., try to skip unskippable steps. This slows progress until the mistake is realized, the missed step is accomplished, etc.

See what happens if you slow down each important decision a little bit, especially when you feel tension around it.

6. Check your perceptions directly at the next opportunity.
What things that you might go back and look at, did your parents and other influencers feel strongly about, pro or con?

What things that you have seen before did you perhaps see through their eyes?
Go back and look with fresh eyes.

7. How do you react to dissonance?
Sometimes, you get excited and challenged by a lot of new questions in your mind; at other times, you get brought down by a whole lot of new things to think about. The difference is how much time you feel you have.

But it is a provable certainty that you make better decisions when you confront new questions with interest and patience and poorer decisions when you try to avoid new questions that arise in your mind.

Each time a whole lot of new questions come up, watch your reaction.

Love to all,
Bill